Additional Math Information

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<h2>I received the following email today:</h2>

<p>Dear [FightTheTide11],</p>

<p>I hope this email finds you well. I am [your area's] Admissions Officer and
am writing at this time to see if you might be able to provide additional
information with regard to your math competitions. It would be most helpful if
you could send to me a copy of a math paper or research that the Committee might
be able to include in your file.</p>

<p>Is this something that you could do in the near future? It shuld be emailed or
faxed to me directly at the contact information below.</p>

<p>Please do let me know if you have any questions, and we appreciate you taking
the time to gather this information and send it along if possible.</p>

<p>Best regards,</p>

<h2>[Admissions Officer]</h2>

<p>So I have a few questions:
1. They ask for more information with regards to competitions. Should I send a list of contests and scores received, etc.?
2. I have never done research. I always thought research was for the IMO super geniuses and not for people like me (I scored about the median on USAMO the last two years). So is there anything I could submit that might substitute as an example of my work for them to add to my file?
3. Should I perhaps include a syllabus of the coursework I did above AP Calc BC so they can know what my Vector Calc/DiffEq/LinAl/Modern Algebra courses covered?
4. I selected the "Mathematics" option on my supplement. Should I somehow indicate that I plan to pursue math in a more econ-based context so that they know I'm probably not a total pure-math guy?
5. Has anyone else received one of these emails? If so, have you done anything yet? If so, what did you do?
6. Is this email a good sign regarding my admission?</p>

2

<p>I may be saying this prematurely, but I would think that this indicates that your application is being viewed favorably by the admissions committee. Though, I may be wrong.</p>

3

<p>My elder daughter got a communication similar to this from her regional admissions officer four years ago, and we had the impression that it meant that individual was interested in going to bat for her application. D was accepted and met the officer during Prefrosh weekend, and the admissions officer clearly knew her and her background.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Those sound like pretty good ideas to me.</p>

4

<p>To be honest, I envy the OP.</p>

5

<p>The reason they are asking for this is because you indicated Mathematics for your supplement (wait did you put math in under subject choice or “additional materials”?)… Research in Mathematics is not really done at the high school or even really at the undergraduate level so I don’t know what they want in terms of research…</p>

<p>I submitted something for math, not research but a lecture that I gave (well, was asked to give) to freshmen on a topic of my choice. So I wrote a lecture on Van der Weaden’s theorem aimed at 9th graders and submitted that.</p>

6

<p>^ not true, alot of my friends have done math internships with professors. 4 of them got enough results to get intel semis.</p>